The truth of a divine commission being established, it follows that the divinely-appointed messenger must have some message to communicate. We further infer that God will not intrust a message to any person whom He has not previously fully enlightened as to the subject which he has to communicate, and who would not truthfully communicate the message with which he is intrusted. A miracle is therefore not only an attestation to the divine commission of the person performing one, but also to the adequate information and veracity of the messenger. Although a miracle is not wrought to prove the truth of a particular doctrine, but that a particular person is intrusted with a divine commission, we accept a doctrinal statement as true, when made by a messenger thus attested, within the limits of the message with which he affirms himself to be intrusted, on the ground that such a messenger must both be truthful, and possess adequate knowledge. [pg 347] In other words, our belief in the doctrinal statement does not rest on the miracle, but on the veracity of God.
This is the affirmation made in the New Testament respecting the most important class of the miracles which it records. As I have elsewhere observed, not a single instance occurs in it of a miracle wrought for the purpose of proving that a doctrine is true. Our Lord's distinct affirmation is, “The same works that I do, bear witness of me that the Father hath sent me.” (John v. 36.) “If I say the truth, why do ye not believe me?” (John viii. 46.) The miracles which are alleged to have been performed by the Apostles for directly evidential purposes, were wrought in proof of the Resurrection of Christ, and of their own divine commission, which directly depended on it.
Let it also be observed that it by no means follows that every miracle recorded in the New Testament was performed exclusively for evidential purposes. This point I shall consider hereafter.
If these principles are correct, they will at once dispose of two objections which are alleged against miracles: first, that they cannot prove a doctrine; and secondly, that they cannot prove a moral truth. I fully accept the statement that moral truths cannot be proved by the evidence of miracles, but must rest on their own inherent evidence; and that all positive duties rest on the command of God, to whom we feel, on other grounds, that all love, reverence, and adoration are due. The truth of doctrines also cannot be established by the performance of a miracle; but when we accept them on external authority, they rest on the testimony of God, and our full persuasion that He must be in possession of all truth. Although, therefore, I accept as correct these principles, on which the objection is founded, they have no bearing [pg 348] on the point at issue; for the New Testament nowhere affirms that its miracles were wrought to prove either doctrinal statements or moral truths, but facts.
1. It is objected that the prevalence of supernatural beliefs renders the existence of miracles “so hackneyed as scarcely to attract the notice of the nation to whom the Christian revelation was in the first instance addressed.” (Supernatural Religion.)
I reply that this objection contains two inaccuracies. First, it is not true that the miracles of Jesus scarcely attracted the notice of those among whom they were performed. The only authority on this point is the New Testament itself, and this assertion contradicts its express statements. Numerous passages in the Gospels directly affirm that the miracles of our Lord attracted very general attention, and produced a profound astonishment; and that those who had witnessed them considered that there was a wide distinction between them and the miraculous pretensions then current. His fame is represented as having been spread by them in regions beyond Palestine; and great multitudes are stated to have collected, both for the purpose of hearing Him and of being healed of their diseases. The fourth Gospel represents our Lord as rebuking the multitudes, for attending on Him for sordid purposes. It is quite true, that notwithstanding the miracles, the body of the Jewish nation ultimately rejected Christianity, though the epistles bear witness that the Jewish element which was attracted into the Christian Church was large. The assertion, therefore, is simply contrary to fact, that miracles were in those days so common and hackneyed as to attract little or no attention to him who professed to work them.
Equally inaccurate is the assertion that the evidence of miracles as the attestation to a revelation was a [pg 349] “hackneyed” one. The Old Testament professed to rest on miraculous evidence. This being the case, the Jews were fully entitled to expect that if God made a further revelation of His will, it would be accompanied by a miraculous attestation. But Judaism was the only religion of the ancient world which professed to be founded on the evidence of miracles. A belief in a current supernaturalism was no doubt mixed up with the ancient religions, but its wonders were not alleged to have been wrought in attestation of the fact that they were revelations, nor even as attestations to their truth. The religion of the Greeks possessed both priests and prophets; but they performed no miracles in attestation of a divine commission. The only attestation of this kind which they claimed was the utterance of obscure or mendacious oracles. I am not aware that anyone who pretended to be a revealer of the divine will in ancient times ever professed to perform visible and palpable miracles in proof of his assertions. Similar is the position of the old religions which still exist in the modern world. Many of them abound in stories of the most fantastic manifestations of their gods in ancient times. Their votaries believe in the efficacy of magic, charms, and incantations. But none of these things have been affirmed to have been wrought in attestation of a divine commission. Mahometanism claims, in the strictest sense, to be a divine revelation; yet the Koran even offers apologies for the fact that its founder wrought no miracles in attestation of his claim to be a divine messenger. So far therefore is it from being the fact that miracles are so generally alleged by religions in vindication of their claim to be revelations, that Judaism and Christianity are absolutely unique in this respect. The idea of working a miracle in attestation of a divine commission is so far from [pg 350] being a “hackneyed” one, that it has the strongest claims to originality.
2. It is urged by the same writer that “every marvel and every narrative of supernatural interference seemed a matter of course to the superstitious credulity of the age. However much miracles are the exception to the order of nature, they have always been the rule in the history of ignorance. In fact the excess of belief in them throughout many centuries of darkness, is almost fatal to their claims to credence now. They have been limited to periods of ignorance and superstition, and are unknown to ages of enlightenment. The Christian miracles are rendered almost as suspicious from their place in a long series of similar occurrences, as they are by their being exceptions to the sequence of natural phenomena. It would be extraordinary if cycles of miracles occurring before and since those of the Gospels, and in connection with every religion, could be repudiated as fables, and these alone maintained as genuine.”
The principles which I have laid down in a former chapter fully meet the chief points raised in these objections. A few additional observations on them, therefore, are all that will be necessary.
First: the assertion that every marvel or narrative of supernatural interference seemed a matter of course to the superstitious credulity of the age, is inaccurate. If they had been of habitual or constant occurrence, they would have ceased to be marvels at all. In such a case the trade of the impostor would have gone, for it would not have paid him. The entire plausibility of such reasonings arises from confounding under a common name phenomena wholly different in character. I ask emphatically, did the current supernaturalism of any age or nation accept as matters of course such [pg 351] events as the resurrection of Christ, or the cure of a blind man, or a man full of leprosy, by a word or a touch? Have not heathen writers pronounced actual resurrections from the dead to be impossibilities? Were such occurrences ever believed to be within the power of magic to effect? Belief in the possibility of such occurrences became current only under the influence of Christianity.